Total Quality Management (TQM) is a set of management practices throughout the company or organization. Its main objective is to ensure the organization consistently meets and exceeds the requirements of the customers. TQM places strong focus on process measurement and controls as a means for constant improvement. For example; a tool one would use for Quality Management would Six Sigma or Just-In-Time (JIT); which are a source of training/techniques or tool that would emphasize on this subject. (Total Quality Management (TQM) in Firms, 2006). In order to ensure the success of any type of process improvement plan within an organization, it is critical that quality be a key element in the organization's strategic plan.
Management must be in full support of these efforts of process improvement with resources and tools in order to drive success of their department and overall, success of the company. With that said, there has to be Total Quality (TQ) in order to initiate continuous quality improvement initiatives cross functionally by operations methods and implementation, as well as a balance between quality focus and customer focus. Here is how the TQM process works. Start at the top level of management and educate all levels down. Understand the customer's requirements, use statistical methods for problem solving, train employees, focus on the process, not people and use all levels to brainstorm and make decisions. (Total Quality and Business Planning, UOP 2007).
Globalization makes Quality (TQM) happen. As companies get bigger, there is an increasing demand for JIT management (just-in-time), which TQM embraces. This makes things move faster and pushes along globalization. This also calls for the removal of bottlenecks in production resulting in high qu ...